Articles, comment and meditations on power, oppression and political mindfulness

Tuesday, 27 September 2016

Let them view cake - media normalizing of warmongers and the arms trade

How do warmongering politicians and the corporate arms industry they so readily promote manage to evade serious indictment? Largely, because our media grant them privileged status and effective protection.

David Cameron's 'legacy' has now been officially stained by a Foreign Affairs Select Report damning his actions on Libya. But he won't be going to The Hague any time soon for his leading part in that murderous calamity. Nor will you hear any of our major media campaigning for him to be made fully accountable.

557 MPs voted for the motion to attack Libya in March 2011. Only 13 voted against, among them Labour's Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, alongside Caroline Lucas of the Green Party.

Likewise, the BBC's token reporting of the committee findings contained no mention of mass media support at the time for the bombing.

A wide array of political and media notables supported the assault on Libya. Among them, the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland now offers only cringing distance and consoling words for Cameron.

Even now, after the mass death and criminality inflicted on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and others on the 'R2P' list, our liberal media just can't bring itself to shine a real critical light on UK War Inc.

For issue-placing editors, none of that has been deemed as much of a topical public story as 'major developments' in The Great British Bake Off. All of which brings a new propaganda twist to that infamous invocation, 'Let them eat cake'.

What kind of serious media can emote so many headlines about the 'loss' of a baking show, while virtually ignoring Britain's elevation as a top merchant of death?

In a world of relentless conflict, we all need a little light escapism. But when media-hyped bake-offs are deemed more newsworthy than state sanctioned arms trade-offs, we've really reached a point of entertainment as mass diversion and political dulling.

The dark truth of Britain's insatiable corporate arms dealing can be found in a fine piece of investigative journalism by Mark Curtis. Here we see the real mercenary extent of Britain's arms and oil dealings with Egypt's el-Sissi regime, and how our most favoured dictators are given an easy ride by establishment media.

Britain has been 'in the news' recently over its supply of weaponry to Saudi Arabia. But, again, where is the really damning headline commentary? Why don't the BBC have, say, Campaign Against the Arms Trade or Stop the War on to explain and denounce the UK's vile trade? Why isn't this a leading media issue?

Instead, we must turn to alternative outlets such as Media Lens, lamenting the failure of key media to report on UK arms to the Saudi regime for the merciless bombing of Yemen, and the dark collusion of British intelligence.

The cockpit of a supersonic Tornado attack bomber is a much more peaceful place than you might expect. "It's incredibly quiet," says Jas Hawker, a former RAF wing commander who flew the aircraft over Iraq and Kosovo. "The pilot and the navigator could drop their oxygen masks and talk to each other. It's not silent but it's a lot quieter than people think." It also has a rather retro feel, as befits a four-decade-old model approaching the end of its time in service.

Style and aesthetics, quiet performance, but no mention of the explosive purpose and brutal effect on humanity below.

When American firms dominate a global market worth more than $70 billion dollars a year, you'd expect to hear about it. Not so with the global arms trade. It's good for one or two stories a year in the mainstream media, usually when the annual state of the business come out. It’s not that no one writes about aspects of the arms trade. There are occasional pieces that, for example, take note of the impact of US weapons transfers, including cluster bombs, to Saudi Arabia, or of the disastrous dispensation of weaponry to US allies in Syria, or of foreign sales of the costly, controversial F-35 combat aircraft. And once in a while, if a foreign leader meets with the president, US arms sales to his or her country might generate an article or two. But the sheer size of the American arms trade, the politics that drive it, the companies that profit from it, and its devastating global impacts are rarely discussed, much less analyzed in any depth.

Nor will a corporate media make the connection here on why American society is also a gun-toting, police-rampaging War Zone.

In a parting gift from Obama, the US has just signed an 'aid' deal with Israel worth $38 billion over 10 years. That's $3.8 billion per year, up from $3.1 billion. While a slavish media gush over Hillary, turning a blind-eye to her hawk agenda and neo-con backers, how much attention has that obscene statistic received?

As 'Bibi' and Obama exchange their cringing homilies and farewells, where is the critical examination of that ugly incentive to mass killing and destabilisation?

Any sane and rational media would be asking how and why such major politicians remain effectively immune from prosecution over their executive wars and elimination of mass populations.

But it's the very media normalization of militarism, warmongering and its elite exponents that provides the most vital cover.

On Question Time recently, David Dimbleby goaded Labour's John McDonnell over being "a Marxist", followed by Tory MP Anna Soubry calling him a "nasty piece of work." Meanwhile, on the same panel sat Alastair Campbell, a political knave par excellence, deeply complicit in the likely loss of 1 million Iraqi lives. Even after Chilcot damned Blair, Campbell still defended him, and remains one of the key players in the whole Iraq deceit. What kind of moral media do he have when Campbell's presence on such shows is deemed more respectable than people like McDonnell?

Campbell has been doing many other studio rounds, such as the BBC Jeremy Vine Show - Vine was also a VIP guest at a major arms dealers dinner - promoting his book, Winners: And How They Succeed. For our power-fascinated media, the concept of 'successful' human endeavour, it seems, involves spinning, tricking a country into war, and then having the front to write a text on 'winning psychology'.

But those who executed, supported and still refuse to acknowledge the crimes of Iraq also enjoy a wider political reception. Campbell recently interviewed Nicola Sturgeon for Q8 Magazine. And George Galloway has hosted unrepentant Blair war apologist John McTernan on Sputnik. Despite Galloway's film, The Killings of Tony Blair, and other noble efforts to indict Blair's war circle, he retains a strong degree of 'political admiration' for McTernan.

It's just basic manners, some may say. Fair intellectual engagement. Open, adversarial debate. Yet, even where key political differences exist, as they plainly do in these cases, it seems that 'our' war cheerleaders are still to be granted respected status.

How did it come to pass? How did people directly responsible for mass killing come to enjoy such celebrity profiles? What is it with villains like Blair, Brown, Campbell and McTernan that they're all still so feted and embraced by politicians and journalists? Imagine real journalists like John Pilger conducting such interviews and failing to question their leading roles in great crimes.

Again, it's all part of a default media culture which just can't contemplate the dark actions of 'ours'. This needn't involve full exoneration. Rather, it's a process of easy acceptance and familiarity, whether it's the Guardian asking Tony for another opinion, or Alastair doing another 'turn' on Question Time. They may be deemed 'controversial' - and sought even more so for 'ratings appeal' - but never considered criminal or beyond the pale in the sense reserved for official foreign enemies.

As figures like Blair, Campbell and Cameron enjoy the financial rewards, patronage and sinecures of post-political office, the human devastation they've caused gets treated as some kind of 'past issue' - it's 'all just politics'.

It's not that such people should be personally hated, hounded or even denied compassion. It's a question of justice, of a media bearing true witness to elite criminality, of insisting that no one, however senior, however famous, can escape responsibility for their part in the taking of mass human life. The same must apply to corporate elites engaged in arms production and the economy of death.

When might the BBC pitch and defend that kind of programming? When might we see a Great British Media Off between channels and editors competing to reveal what's really being cooked up by warmongering profiteers in the kitchens of power?

5 comments:

Beautiful Sakura
said...

Hi John

Thank you very much for this great piece. very well thought out, and said.

It's one of the things I have been trying to say to people for a few years now, Re Cameron's war crimes in both Libya, and Syria, plus the arming of Saudi Arabia as they commit an ongoing genocide in Yemen, And then the callous UK establishment blocked a European Union independent inquiry into the war in Yemen. Shocking.

Have you seen Craig Murray's latest post, where he talks of his experiences in Sierra Leone, some heart breaking tales of how that all worked(s)

A splendid radio interview with Eva Bartlett led to the lies of Lyse Doucet and onwards to your marvellous report. A very constructive day on the net for a change. Great reporting, I particularly like the suggestion of the major news channels actually battling to report the 'real' truth. Any ideas how this can be achieved?

Thanks, Dave. Alas, we will wait in vain for any such corporate-driven, liberal establishment, system-safe media ever competing to deliver radical truths. Which is why we must turn to, and help build, alternative journalism and platforms free from such boundaries and constraints.